


65 months, 13 days

by Kat2107



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Gabe is a tad overdramatic, Grief, Jack Morrison: The Reaper's Tooth Fairy, Jack is a very sad salty dad, M/M, Mention of torture, Not sure how to tag for people collecting human teeth, Temporary Character Death, Warning for:, bad coping (If the teeth thing didn't tip you off), mention of brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8915380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107
Summary: Zürich headquarters exploded. Gabriel Reyes died.Jack Morrison deals the best he can in silence and in secrecy.Nothing, though, can prepare him for the truth of what happened.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everybody who helped me and my perfectionist anxiety.  
> I was not supposed to write this. 
> 
> Too bad, I did anyways.

_4 weeks, 3 days_

 

Silence.

There was nothing to say. Just the soft tinkling of a dog tag and ball chain as it hit the dirt. The rustling of falling earth.

The wounded animal sound of pain soaking the ground.

 

_13 weeks_

 

Tears fell to the ground as the only offering. More pain.

“Why…”

 

_5 months, 13 days_

 

“Happy birthday.” he breathed.

“I’m sorry.” A sob tore through the gentle warmth and peace of a private garden’s corner in Dorado. Fresh, still fragile grass grew over the earth. “I miss you so fucking much!”

 

_12 months, one day_

 

“I…,” his voice hitched. “...got your files. Stole ‘em.”

Silence.

Then: “Fuck.”

No tears. Only his broken voice, roughened by too many screams.

“I found your note. In the Numbani safehouse. Why… WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HIDE IT? I would’ve… I would’ve tried. I swear. Fuck. Why? _Why?”_

The note fluttered to the ground, the whisper as it landed on the ant hill growing behind the stone too soft. He heard the accusation anyway.

_‘Help me. There is something wrong with me.’_

“Forgive me.” His fingers clutched the unmarked headstone, so far from his own in Arlington. So different. So undeserved. Their places should be traded. “I’m sorry. So sorry. You tried and I just... “

He owned the house. Both of them did, the first floor reserved for the old woman that lived here. Smoke screens and mirrors. Stolen privacy.

The only place on earth truly _them._

The only foot by foot spot he had left.

His teeth dug into the leather of his jacket. Too thick to even feel them. Just about thick enough to muffle his screams.

Tears made no sound as they fell.

 

 _17 months, 14 days_.

 

A bottle of beer opened with a low ‘pop’

“I can’t believe that I didn’t think of it. I just swallowed all the shit you dished and nodded it off like some half-brained dimwit. The moment you said that I was too much hassle to be worth the effort it should’ve clicked.” He took a long pull from the bottle and released an equally long breath after. “Instead I believed you suddenly didn’t want me anymore after all those years. ”

"Remember how you said my head was too far up my ass to know what’s going on across the street?” The stone under his cheek was cold, the sun’s warmth long leached out by the time he had made it. His low sigh faded against the rough surface, an offering rejected. “Yeah so, that happened.”

“I was the one person who should’ve known…”

Like an afterthought, he put the bottle back to his lips and snorted a cut-off laugh.

“You were my life. My Commander. My heart. Did you know you were my first? 'Course you did.”

The same laugh, only that tad more painful. “Was too embarrassed to admit it. Too head over heels to even contemplate you wanted me. But you did.”

His voice slurred around the edges a little. Five bottles down in quick succession and three six-packs to go. “Before you ask, no, I didn’t. Moron. You’re still the only one. Only thing I ever cheated you with was work. When you drifted away...” His fingers curled around the stone, languid caresses bumped over the rough surface, the brush of a kiss. “Should’ve thought about _you_ more, maybe then…”

The bottle dropped. He opened the next with his teeth.

Falling back into silence he reached out and flipped a bug upright that struggled to crawl over one of the newly grown blades of grass.

“I miss you.” He pressed his lips to the stone again and closed his eyes. “Gonna be gone a while. Catch you an anniversary present.”

 

_24 months, roughly_

 

Limping into the silent garden, torn jacket in one hand, mending kit in the other, he dropped to his knees with a low groan of pain.

“Hey, babe. Brought you something.” He dug the ring from his pant pocket, wasting a moment to admire the Westpoint signet in the moonlight. “One down. You were right.” He huffed. “It never was your men, not entirely. And not the “criminals” either.”

He pushed the ring into the ground, harder now than it had been in the beginning, the soft fluff of freshly dug earth giving way to the densely packed tightness of a healed wound. “Clean in front of your own door, you said. Did you know what you said there? Or was that just…

"Jesse is safe. He made it out. And so far, he seems clear. I have an eye on him. Bounty hunter. Already managed to get himself in trouble. Because of-fucking-course. It’s not like he was raised by you or anything.”

His fingers curled into the dirt, forced the ring deeper, closer to hell if it meant anything, loosening the ground, just a little. As if he could hold on if the wound stayed fresh enough.

 

_29 months, 13 days_

 

He curled in front of the stone and sobbed, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels toppled over in accusation.

 

_29 months, 14 days_

 

A small metal box sat in front of the small stone, barely noticeable in a nice tuft of grass. Inside, two human canines. A candle on top like they put on those cheap one bite birthday cakes.

“Jones,” it said crawled on the side with sharpie. “Happy birthday” underneath.

 

_Three years_

 

“I found Berger. Oh God, Gabriel…”

His forehead hit the stone with a soft thud.

“Bohemia… you screamed for days in your sleep. Prague. You didn’t sleep at all after, did you? I never noticed. Was too busy trying to hold that shit together. If I had… just asked. Once.” He let the tears come. “I’m sorry. I don’t deserve it, but please... “

A shadow crossed the moonlight.

The grass quivered in the gentle nightly wind, almost, just almost a memory of touch.

 

_Three years, five months, 13 days_

 

A heavy body thudded onto the fertile earth and in the shadow of the roughly hewn stone wall, a man straightened, pulse rifle slung over his back.

No moon that could’ve revealed the blood on his face. In the distance, sirens wailed, but nobody was close enough to smell the smoke on his reinforced jacket.

He dropped the rifle next to the head stone and sank into the grass.

“No present, just fireworks.” He snorted. “Can’t believe Talon put a laboratory in the city where you’re buried.”

He stretched with a low groan and brushed his fingertips over the stone.

“I dreamed of you last night. Of the time we were on leave at the Costa Brava. You convinced me to break into those castle ruins and fucked me against a stone wall, barely hidden from the whole fucking town. Stupid lunatic. No idea why I kept putting up with your shit.”

No tears. Only soft whispers. “Love you, Gabe.” And like an afterthought. “Forgive me.”

 

He fell asleep next to the stone, reading a newspaper clip on his outdated datapad.

 

**_‘Who is the Reaper?  And who can stop him?’_ **

 

_Tunisia_

 After the latest attack on a UN sponsored research facility…

 

_Three years, 8 months, 21 days_

 

“Finally cracked the encryption on your secret data card. Yeah. THAT one. C’mon, did you really think I didn’t know? My head was not that far up my ass. Remember… I know how my name sounds when you scream it with me inside you.” He smiled. “The only one who does.”

He shoved a French Fry into his mouth and washed it down with beer. “I got a lead on Dr. San. She went deep underground since Talon acquired their new pet merc. Any thoughts on how to get there and get her information before the Reaper does? Thought so. You were always better at this than I. I wonder what she did to get him on her trail... Normally he's after our people, not theirs. 

“Jesse got himself a bounty. Had to get and pluck half a dozen Talon’s off his ass. Figures that I’d be late for our anniversary because McCree almost got himself killed. But I got him, ok? Got an eye on the boy.”

Another fry vanished between his lips to be chewed in silence. Nobody cared whether he talked or not anyways. “No teeth for you this time. I forgot, I was so late already. So, accept my spiritual token of a dozen dead Talons. Happy Twentieth Anniversary.”

“I miss you.” He sighed. “I love you.”

 

_Four years_

 

A shadow slipped into a garden, a rose shimmered black in the pale light.

“Can’t stay, babe, Reaper’s too close behind me.”

He pressed a kiss to the moss covered stone and was long gone by the time Los Muertos paraded past the outer wall, only their unruly laughter disturbing the garden.

 

_Four years, five months, 13 days_

 

The teeth clattered softly intothe hole in the ground.

“Remember Dr. Sandworth? UN emergency psychologist?” He gritted his teeth. “If you care… he tried laughing first, told me all the same shitty lies. How easy it was to turn you against me. How fed up you’d been with me. The difference was just in me not believing them.

“Just that. And it all crumbled.

“He begged in the end.

“Got a list of their moles. All except two were Overwatch. UN appointed. I exchanged them for more funding, political clout… They said jump and I always only asked ‘How high?’.”

He faltered before straightening again. “You trusted me to watch your back, and.... Fuck, Gabriel. I… “ He cut his words off.

The visor went back onto his face with bitter finality. His salute looked sharper than it had in years, decades even.

“Sandworth laughed, said you were dead and gone. ‘No longer of any importance’.” A grim smile crinkled the corners of his eyes and threw scar that crossed his face in deep shadow. “As if I hadn’t always been your extended arm and not the other way round.” His bitter laugh fell short. “They never got that right, did they?”

 

_Five years, two months._

 

“Winston recalled Overwatch.” Jack settled with a deep breath, legs folded under his body with a wince. “The idiot. Always was an idealist. And Reinhardt and Tobjörn. Angela.”

Looking around, Jack found a bird’s nest nestled in a crevice high up in the wall that shadowed the corner of the garden and smiled.  “I’ve taken to carrying a will. “Bury me with Gabriel Reyes, it says. And give this property to Jesse McCree, idiot that he is.’”

Nobody answered, but it was not hard to imagine the question.

“Reaper almost got me in Cairo. I… Ana saved me. Trusted the wrong person.” He laughed. “Groan all you like, I know what you’re thinking now, just… do you know how hard it is, trying to find people who play by the Blackwatch handbook?”

He grumbled. “Stop laughing.”

His hand landed heavily on the stone, moving gently.

“We had a good thing there. Once. Before I fucked it up. This thing we built, what we did, what we believed in. Gabe…” Desperation dripped like tar in the night.

“Jesse went back, too. He doesn’t know, does he? What they did to you? That you didn’t just turn on us? Him? That they’re still out there. Not Talon. Though Talon, too, no matter how much I want to, but I can’t rot them out alone. Not with Reaper hunting old members of Overwatch and me barely keeping up with what's going on. Ana offered help but it’s not enough.”

The stars, when he searched them, provided no answer.  

“The UN. The moles. Traitors. I still haven’t got everything. Even without the encryption…and knowing that something is wrong… If your mind was half as fractured as those notes...

“Dammit, Gabe… I wish… you’d said something. Noted something.

“There are days when I want to march into Arlington and blow up this ugly ass monument, erect one in your honor with my bare hands and yell at the world to open their fucking eyes and SEE.

“I want them to see how I saw you, what they did to you. What I did. But that statue isn’t even me. It’s an idol that I never was. It is you. Wearing my face. Like Overwatch.

“I keep thinking ‘What would Gabe do?’ After he told them to fuck off. I already told Mercy when she contacted me. But I can’t abandon them. Not if there is a chance that it’ll work out. That I can have their back and keep the taint at bay whether I'm with their little club or not.

Idealistic idiot. Too much of that. Always. I had you for practicality. But you've been gone, babe. And it’s just me here. And a dead dream. Don’t judge me that I wanna preserve this little of you.

Please don’t.”

 

_Five years, five months, 13 days_

 

The leather of his jacket creaked softly as he scaled the garden wall, the thud of his boots as they hit the ground by now a welcome sound.

The stone lay undisturbed as always, only a thick patch of grass keeping it company in the long months it sat alone.

But not tonight.

Jack bent down, pressed a kiss on top, the way he sometimes had done when his lover had been sleeping in, curled mumbling around Jack’s pillow, stolen the moment Jack had left the bed.

The rum was in his hand when he sat, bottle shaking softly as he took the first drag.

“Dr. Mendez,” he said and the alcohol burned a painful trail down his throat.

“You got shot in ‘68. Dropped off a moving car. Left shoulder. He claimed nerve damage and a severe concussion and kept you in medical for a whole week.” Another drag, another burn, rivaling the one in his eyes. “You asked me to get you out of there and I… “

Jack’s breath hitched like it hadn’t done in years. Not here, outside the hidden corners in shabby hovels where he hid to scream out his pain.

“I told you to stay. Commander’s orders. Made sure people heard it. No matter what the truth was… you had no chance to overrule it in public.” Glass clanked as the bottle slipped and hit a pebble, the trembling hand grabbing for it too slow. Always too slow. Was there anything Jack Morrison could save?

But the bottle proved sturdier than his life and his oaths.

“You tried sneaking out. Winston sent you straight back in. Back to him.” From his pockets, he pulled a small satchel, threw it in front of the stone. No comment on the familiar sound of teeth rattling.

“I mailed him and Angela the data stick with the truth this morning.” Wiping his eyes became one motion with drinking. “I need them to know. About you. That you never betrayed us. That you fought tooth and nail for us. Until the last second.

“You asked me to get you out of there and I forced you to stay instead and went to a meeting in Bruxelles. Left you behind like you hadn’t asked for my help, like you weren’t the most important fucking thing in my life and I screamed your name the moment you fell, hadn’t spent the night sitting at your bed, cover be damned.”

Only a whisper carried the truth. “I’ve never seen you cry, Gabriel. Not when they built us, not when we lost someone. Never. You knew what was happening and I abandoned you to that bed. You knew. Because it had happened before and FUCK!”

The walls echoed his choked scream, rolled it back like the accusation he wanted it to be.

“Fuck,” he whispered and struggled to his knees, wide blue eyes fixed onto the empty headstone. “Gabe… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I would give anything, I swear, to go back. Anything for your life.”

“Anything?” The shadows killed the moon with the graveyard whisper of a voice as the shotgun cocked and the cold metal slid like a lover’s touch down Jack Morrison's neck. “Who do you wanna sacrifice now, Morrison? Who do you wanna blame this time?”

Jack’s voice choked as his eyes closed and the half empty bottle slid from his grasp. He pushed back into the weapon carefully, slowly, not yet daring to believe.

Hadn’t dared hope since the bullets had hit his back in Cairo, since Ana had sworn she had seen the truth.

“No blame,” he whispered. “Anything, I swear,” he told death and closed his eyes.

A piece of paper fluttered from his hands as he smiled. ‘Help me. There is something wrong with me.’ scrawled on one side. A phone number in neat little letters on the other.

“Your life then.”

Jack heard the grin, distorted by the mask into the brutal reality of hatred as it twined around both of them. His smile widened.

“Alright.” Fingers brushing the ground as his arms fell to his sides, they dug into the ground, loosened the earth. “The number is Angela’s. She says, she can fix it. She swears, she can. That is the price. Call her.”

“This is not how this works, Jack,” Reaper snarled and Jack huffed a low laugh.

“Yeah, it is. I know you. These are my terms and you will fulfill them. Then you can take me.” His fingers curled. “Anything you want, babe.” Hope bloomed in his voice as it turned into a caress, his eyes still closed.

The shotgun twitched, just a moment of silence.

“Why? _You_ won't get him back. You’ll be dead, Jack.”

Jack’s lips curled into a slow smile. Reaper couldn’t see it but they knew each other too well to hide it.

“But you’ll be alive. Not in pain. Free to live.”

“Unselfish. You?” Reaper's laugh shuddered through the night, promising endless nightmares, endless pain.

“No,” Jack said and turned his head, just enough to see the second hand, the second gun as it came up to point at his face. “Nothing unselfish there.”

He tilted his head, stared at the mask. “You know when it’s love? The moment you realize that you’d do anything… whatever it takes to never witness your partner suffering again.”

He bared his throat to the second gun.

“God knows my ego killed you. But this? This is the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.” He closed his eyes and released a breath he had been holding since Gabriel’s last words had been drowned out by the explosion in Zürich, 65 months and 13 days ago.   _I love you._

“Ever since Cairo I tried to come up with the one thing that you would want enough to say yes.” Jack smiled. “It ends here, Gabe. I’m making a deal with the Reaper.”

One shotgun dropped to the ground.

A silver claw brushed softly around his jaw, up to his ear and down his neck again. A soft growl. Then a huffed laugh.

“You’re so wrong, Jack.” The clawed thumb tipped back Jack’s head, forced his gaze fixed onto the bone mask, endless shadows staring back, settling into Jack’s soul with a shudder. “You got the prize all wrong, darling.”

Jack closed his eyes. “Gabe...”

“What wouldn’t you do, Jack? Just to get me to Gibraltar and onto dear Angela’s dissecting table to be cut open _again_ like a piece of meat,” he grated, the malice breaking like ice on Lake Zürich when spring came, leaving nothing but bone weary hurt.

Jack blinked slowly, stared up into that darkness, blinked once more and spread his arms, dirt covered fingers splayed.

The claws pricked his skin, forced his head into place. The second shotgun dropped. The mask fell.

“Nothing,” Jack whispered and closed his arms around the shoulders that crashed into him, against the lips - cold, terrifyingly cold - that locked over his. Into the deep breath that tore at his soul.

Into the exhale that gave it back.

“Whatever you need, Gabe.”

“Shut up, Morrison.”

“Whatever you need.”

 


End file.
